


scars like the number of stars

by janie_tangerine



Series: the jaimebrienne spite countdown to season eight [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: (for both spite and idea), (well SORT OF disfigurement you'll see what I mean), Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brienne is the Best, Consent Issues, Disfigurement, Don't Like Don't Read, Experimental Style (for me at least), F/M, I Blame Tumblr, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied Sexual Content, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Past Abuse (how past is up to you to decide but counts from part 10 onwards), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Sibling Incest, Soulmates, Spitefic, implied abusive relationship, is2g it ends a lot better than these tags make it sound like i'm just warning thoroughly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 12:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18142403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: She had hoped things would look better after a bath and after he cleaned up.Just because seeing those scars made her stomach turn on itself.They don’t. He looks better, and that hair of his looks soft and golden in the sunlight, but his bleeding scars are still open and the only one that looks only barely healed is the burn on his right hand.The one he killed the Mad King with.She swallows as the guard leaves him in her room, his wrists still chained.What am I, your prisoner?She wishes he was.No, my soulmate.or: negative soulmate au where only a soulmate can see your scars.





	scars like the number of stars

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand for this beautiful Sunday, you get a wagonload of angst brought on first and foremost by this one gem also from the year of the lord 2015:
> 
> I was looking for some way to fit it in, then stumbled on this post with [negative soulmate aus](http://janiedean.tumblr.com/post/182004707823/aurorasmemes-negative-soulmate-aus-for-all-you), I read the 'only your soulmate can see your scars' one, went like WOW THAT COULD WORK IF WE DECIDE IT'S *NOT* THE PHYSICAL SCARS, then I started it and it apparently called for a) writing all the sections in 100/200/300 words pieces, b) mccarthy-inspired dialogue-ing which he pulls off way better than I ever could, but I don't even know. I tried. Have a piece of experimental writing angst.
> 
> Also: anyone who comes here trying to convince me my interpretation of the incident quoted in the beginning of this fic is Not What I Think It Is can close the tab and read something more suited to their tastes, thank you and see you tomorrow with something way more lighthearted.
> 
> To finish: the title is from the gaslight anthem (we're back to the usual!), I own zilch except for the spite and I'll saunter back downwards to try and finish the last twelve I haven't finished yet. ;)

> He could never bear to be long apart from his twin. _Even as children, they would creep into each other’s beds and sleep with their arms entwined. Even in the womb_.  **Long before his sister’s flowering or the advent of his own manhood, _they had seen mares and stallions in the fields and dogs and bitches in the kennels and played at doing the same_. Once their mother’s maid had caught them at it… _he did not recall just what they had been doing, but whatever it was had horrified Lady Joanna_**. She’d sent the maid away, moved Jaime’s bedchamber to the other side of Casterly Rock, set a guard outside Cersei’s, and told them that they must never do that again or she would have no choice but to tell their lord father. They need not have feared, though. It was not long after that she died birthing Tyrion. Jaime barely remembered what his mother had looked like.
> 
> Jaime III,  _A Storm of Swords_
> 
>  

 

1.

 

In each of his first memories, Cersei’s skin is smooth and pale and creamy and his fingers are always rough against its softness. It’s always warm, and touching it feels like running his fingertips against the finest silk, all the time, as they lay in the dark holding on to each other and she whispers, _we’re one and the same_.

Of course they are.

How would they _not_ be when she slots so perfectly against him, when she fits right there in his arms, when her voice is so sweet as she says, _we were born to be together_?

 

2.

 

 _Look at them_ , she says, staring at the horses just over there in the stables. He nods, not quite getting what she’s aiming at. The corner of her mouth turns upward. She grabs his wrists. _We should try that on our own._

 _I don’t know_ , he says, watching. He doesn’t think he’d like it. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel proper. It seems brutal and rough and not what love should be about.

(He loves her. He knows he does.)

_Come on. It seems easy. No one will find us in our room._

She takes his wrists. He follows her.

 

3.

 

( _Cersei unlaces his breeches when he won’t. Her hands touch his hips._

What are you so afraid of? It’s normal. We saw it, didn’t we?

_They did. His breeches fall to the floor. She raises her skirts as she glances at him, green eyes just the same as his own taking him in._

_She turns her back to him. Just like that horse._

We belong together. It’s fine. Do it.

_Jaime’s hands touch her hips. His fingers are shaking. She huffs, reaches back, takes his elbow._

Are you craven or what?

_He shakes his head._

Then do it.

_He does.)_

 

4.

 

Her palms are warm on his neck.

_Join the Kingsguard. We’ll be together always. Like we’re meant to be. We’re soulmates, aren’t we?_

Her skirts are lifted and her mouth is smiling and he thinks he could get lost in her eyes as she looks up at him — his mirror, his other half, his _everything_.

He remembers learning about soulmates with her.

 _Only your soulmate can see your scars,_ they were told. _But not the ones on the outside._

Cersei had scoffed, after that lesson. _It’s nonsense. Lannisters aren’t weak like_ that.

 _We are,_ he says.

Then he takes her.

 

5.

 

Sometimes he thinks he should ask the Queen if she sees Aerys’s soulmarks.

He knows he can’t. It wouldn’t be proper. He has no right.

He wonders how many scars would the king’s soulmate see. He hopes it’s not Rhaella Targaryen.

Probably a _lot_ of them.

He can’t ask Cersei if things have changed and if his skin is still smooth and unblemished, just like her own, since she’s not here. But then he remembers what she said all the time — _such weaknesses are beneath us_.

He stands outside the King’s door and tells himself that she must be right.

 

6.

 

(Her legs were bleeding.

_Tyrion doesn’t look at him as he says it._

What?

They weren’t bleeding for real. I saw it happen. It was all scarred over, but it was fresh. She was my soulmate, wasn’t she?

 _Jaime says nothing. Tyrion shakes his head._ I guess I should’ve known.

You — should have known?

Of course if I have a soulmate, it would be just on my part, wouldn’t it?

_Jaime should tell him something uplifting. Jaime should make him laugh as he always used to do._

_Jaime feels like throwing up._

_From tomorrow, he won’t think about_ this _anymore._ )

 

7.

 

Her hand lingers on his shoulder for a moment, then she pushes him off the bed.

 _This has to be the last time for a long time. We can’t risk anyone suspecting_.

He swallows. _Then when?_

 _I will come to you._ Her voice is honey-sweet as she runs a fingertip over his cheekbone. _It won’t feel long. I promise_.

He believes her, of course he does. Her neckline is pale and creamy and the rising sun bathes it in soft orange.

_All right. I can wait._

He waits for a long time.

He waits for a long time, thrice.

 

8.

 

Bran Stark looks at him with terrified blue eyes as Jaime catches him, tiny hands latching to his forearm.

Jaime thinks, _at least I caught him._ Then he realizes: he might tell.

_How old are you, boy?_

_Seven._ He sounds relieved.

He looks at Cersei. His soulmate’s eyes are ice cold green, her body a smooth expanse of soft skin, the same as it’s always been.

If he tells, she’s dead, _he_ ’s dead, her children are dead. Jaime’s stomach curls on itself.

He wants to throw up. But he can’t risk his other half.

 _The things I do for love_.

 

9.

 

He’s not expecting Catelyn Stark to pay him a visit in his stinky, cold, small dungeon cell, nor for her to carry a wineskin. He’s about to try and rile her up just because he can.

Then he sees the armored woman behind her.

For a moment he thinks it’s a man. But no, it’s a woman: tall, straw-blonde hair, broken nose, large shoulders, ugly as the seven hells —

Then he _sees_ a bleeding weird scar on her cheek shaped like rose petals.

_Who decided to make you even uglier putting that thing on your face?_

He expected scorn.

Wide, guileless blue eyes stare down at him, as her large lips part in surprise, showing a row of crooked teeth. She brings a hand to her mouth. She looks like she’s about to cry as she looks down at him, her fingertips shaking. Oh. All of her fingers are scarred, but differently from the cheek, those ones are old, almost white.

He hears Catelyn Stark asking, _she has nothing on her face_. But he barely does, because whoever _she_ is, she’s shaking her head, taking a better look at him.

And then —

 _Good gods, who did_ this _to him?_

 

10.

 

Brienne doesn’t know what she expected coming into the Kingslayer’s cell. Most likely, an honor-less man without any respect for the cloak he wore who spat on everything she wishes she could have.

Then she looks down at him.

They _told_ her he was beautiful.

And she does see a handsome man… but _literally_ covered in scars. She’s heard about the Hound, but not even _him_ would look like this, she thinks. Lannister’s wrists are a mess of bleeding scar tissue, the skin under his beard has twin, deep cuts, his neck under that steel collar looks like someone bloody _flayed_ it. His right hand is covered in a _bad_ burn scar that seems badly healed, and she can see a new, raw stripped piece of flesh on his right forearm where his clothes are torn.

 _Good gods, who did_ this _to him?_

She’s so horrified, she can’t think about how much the man in front of her has to be despicable.

 _No one did shit to me_ , Lannister snorts.

She shakes her head.

 _Brienne, what do you see_ , Lady Stark asks, urgently.

She swallows. _He’s all scars. Only his eyes are not._

_I see nothing._

Then Brienne _understands_.

 

11.

 

She had hoped things would look better after a bath and after he cleaned up.

Just because _seeing_ those scars made her stomach turn on itself.

They don’t. He looks better, and that hair of his looks soft and golden in the sunlight, but his bleeding scars are still open and the only one that looks only barely healed is the burn on his right hand.

The one he killed the Mad King with.

She swallows as the guard leaves him in her room, his wrists still chained.

_What am I, your prisoner?_

She wishes he was.

_No, my soulmate._

 

12.

 

 _No way_ you _are_. He’s laughing, but of course he is.

Thing is: Brienne always knew about soulmates. She always knew she wasn’t Renly’s, as much as she wishes she had been. Brienne also never liked to lie to herself. Everyone told her that no, to _them_ he looks as he should.

_Lannister, there isn’t a piece of you that I can’t see that’s not scarred over. As much as we might both hate it, there’s no other explanation now, is there?_

She can’t call him Kingslayer. Not when she can see his right hand _now_.

Then he stops laughing.

 

13.

 

 _I am_ not _scarred all over,_ he protests.

 _To me, you are_. She breathes, then she takes off her shirt. She doesn’t want to, not in front of _him_ , but she has to know. _Tell me what do_ you _see_.

He swallows, his mouth drawn in a thin line, glances at her.

_There are two brands on your hip and wrist. Scarred over, but recently. Your fingers are scarred, too, but it’s old stuff. And you have fucking bleeding flower petals on your face. What, no one else sees that?_

She shakes her head, keeping eye contact.

_No. Only you._

 

14.

 

He doesn’t talk to her for a week. Lady Stark has, of course, changed her mind about her plan — she’s not going to send her away with a man who’s somehow her soulmate, and people in the castle have started distrusting her just because of course they wouldn’t, not when it’s such an infamous man.

It hurts, though. Lady Stark still does trust her, but everyone else suddenly disliking her even more —

She thinks about that hand. _Kingslayer’s whore_ , she hears people whisper. _As if his sister wasn’t enough_.

She feels her throat close up.

She goes to her room.

 

15.

 

 _Tell me_.

_About fucking what?_

_About the Mad King._

_Why would you even want to know?_

_Your right hand. It’s the only part of you that’s barely healed. Barely. It’s a burn. A_ bad _burn. You’re not telling the entire story._

_And why would you care?_

_Maybe I had a taste of how it feels for you. And it’s not right._

_… It’s not_ right _._

_No. People don’t talk to me because we’re soulmates, and they assume I have shit for honor just for that, and — I know I have honor. I know. Tell me. Please._

_… Fuck me, you_ mean _it._

 

16.

 

He tells her. He keeps on glancing at her as if he wants to be sure she’s listening.

The more he goes on, the more she feels sick. By the time he’s told the entire story, she knows he’s not lying.

She knows it in her bones, the same way she knows _he’s her soulmate_.

They say nothing for a long, long moment.

_Has my little tale turned you speechless? Kiss me or curse me or call me a liar, but don’t gape like a fucking fish._

She reaches out, touches his right hand, then thinks better on it —

_Wait._

 

17.

 

 _Do it again_.

She does.

 _Oh._ He sounds amazed. _It hurt before._

_And now?_

_Now, it hurts less._

She moves it away. It’s changed.

 _What do you see_. His voice is barely a whisper by now.

 _It’s — less raw_ , she breathes. It’s still that same burn, but looks just a bit healed now.

 _So — so, you believe me?_ He sounds incredulous, his voice not so sure anymore.

_I couldn’t not. I can feel it. It’s obvious. And — for what it’s worth, I’m sorry no one seems to have asked you before._

His fingers brush her cheek.

 _Tell me_.

She does.

 

18.

 

He listens as she tells him about Ronnet Connington and the rose he threw in her face.

_Tell me about your fingers._

She tells him about Ser Humphrey.

_Tell me about your hip and the wrist._

She had no idea that Renly’s hands branded her like a scar.

But as she tells him, it suddenly makes sense. He was the first man who treated her seriously but he wasn’t her soulmate, she knows now, she knows as she stares into warm, green eyes surrounded by bloody, tender gashes.

 _This still bleeds_. His fingers brush her cheek.

_All of you bleeds._

 

19.

 

Jaime doesn’t know what to make of Brienne of Tarth, not when she tells him _that_ with such a sad, trembling voice, he doesn’t know how it’s possible that someone who isn’t Cersei is his — his _soulmate_ , but she’s right on one thing.

They _are_.

There is no way she’s not, not when no one else can see the bleeding petals on her face.

 _I really don’t, wench._ His attempt at riling her up falls flat.

_Jaime, I’m serious. Your neck is flayed and it’s not even the worst thing._

He stands up. _Tell me._

He takes off his clothes.

 

20.

 

Those gorgeous blue eyes of hers (the only part that’s really, absolutely stunning) go wide as he takes off his shirt and breeches. He keeps the smallclothes, no point in making this something it’s _not._ Cersei is the one he wants, not _her_ , certainly not her.

 _What_.

She shakes her head, her fingers covering her mouth.

She looks like she might be sick.

 _Wench,_ what _?_

She breathes. _They’re all over you. And your ankle is branded. It has a sore around it. It’s bleeding_. _Who did it?_

She sounds like she’ll murder whoever it was.

But if it’s his _ankle_ —

 

21.

 

She holds his head up while he vomits in the chamber pot.

She wasn’t lying. She couldn’t have been. But if there’s a bleeding sore on his branded _ankle —_ Cersei always said, he was holding on to hers when they were born. She always said it must be a sign that they were —

Her fingers are rough and large and impossibly gentle as she keeps his hair out of his face.

 _Where else is it bleeding bad_.

_Wrists, especially. Your cheekbones. Your shoulder. The cuts on your face. Your neck._

Oh.

All the places where Cersei would —

He heaves again.

 

22.

 

She doesn’t ask for details.

He feels a spark of gratitude so strong when she doesn’t that he almost cries. He sits up against the wall as she drops down next to him. She can’t seem to tear her eyes away from him.

For once, he doesn’t hate that it’s someone who’s not Cersei.

_Answer me this. If I’m all scars, how are you still looking?_

Hells, from how she puts it, it sounds like he’s like the Hound, just _worse_.

_Why wouldn’t I?_

_Isn’t it a tad ugly to look at?_

She laughs _. Ser, who are you talking to?_

 

23 _._

 

They sleep in separate beds. Usually. But when that night, after he wakes up hearing Aerys’s laughs echo across the halls in the Red Keep, she clears his throat. Her voice is barely audible when she asks him if he wants to share.

Instinct brings him across the room before he knows it, slipping inside her bed, not knowing what he’s doing, but as she delicately touches his cheekbones with rough, swordsman’s hands, as if she doesn’t even know if she _can_ , he thinks, _it feels right_.

It does. Whether he wants to accept it or not.

But — _does he_?

 

24.

 

He opens his bright green eyes as Brienne slowly runs her fingertips over his neck.

The sunlight is making his scarred flesh looking even more blood-red, but his eyes have something soft in them as he suddenly gasps and attempts to leave —

_I don’t have to go, do I?_

She shakes her head. _Not if you don’t want to. Why?_

He looks almost shaken by that piece of information, but then he curls up against her again, as if he’s taken some kind of decision.

The flayed skin on his neck isn’t fresh anymore when she stops touching it.

 

25.

 

_Are you saying he’s better that we gave him credit for?_

Brienne thinks of the nights he’s slipped inside her bed, at how some of those scars stopped bleeding after she touched them, at how he says that he can’t see them but he can _feel_ they’re better, at how she realized that most of the bleeding ones are because of _his sister_.

 _Give him a chance, my lady_.

He’s not trying to jape when he tells her about what happened to her son.

(He sounds genuinely sorry.)

The scar on his forearm bleeds way, way less after he’s done.

 

26.

 

_Your wrists._

_What about them?_

_They’re the worst. They keep on bleeding. What aren’t you saying?_

He shakes his head. His throat works up and down.

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. But she knows her petals haven’t bled since he kissed her cheek after the forearm scar healed. Maybe she wants to know.

He shrugs. _The first time Cersei and I —_

_We were seven —_

_The stables —_

_They found us —_

_I don’t remember what happened —_

His hands are shaking.

She holds up his wrists, kissing each one.

The way he looks at her makes her think, _this feels like a song_.

 

27.

 

In songs, girls usually lose their maidenhead by letting a strong, gentle, beautiful knight take it.

When Brienne loses hers, it’s the contrary. Jaime’s lying beneath her, her fingertips gently holding his bleeding wrists to the mattress, her mouth running along the cuts on his face, his hands grasping at the scars Renly left her — she rides him slowly, feeling every second of it, those warm, sharp green eyes staring up at her like he really wants _her_ to do this, and it feels just _right_ , in ways only holding a sword ever did.

She tells him.

The bleeding stops.

 

28.

 

A moon later, the cuts on his face are white. His wrists only rarely bleed. He told her that the petals on her face don’t bleed anymore, either. They stopped pretending to sleep in separate beds.

 _Does_ he _really make you happy?_

She looks at her liege lady. _What if he does?_

 _Then you should hold on to it while you can. You never know what might happen_.

She sounds like she _knows_.

Brienne thinks at how he looks at her in the morning, as if he can’t believe he _can_ wake up with her.

 _I will_.

She means it.

 

29.

 

He’s as good as a turncloak now. He knows that. Catelyn Stark knows that. _Everyone_ in Riverrun knows that. People still whisper behind his back.

Now it’s not just about his lack of honor.

It’s also about how someone as ugly as she is can be _his_ soulmate, and if he fucked his sister, how can such a hideous face compare?

 _Fools_ , he thinks. If Brienne can see him for _real_ and still not blink an eye at how _he_ is the uglier one out of the two of them, she’s made of much tougher stuff than any of them.

 

30.

 

_You know, Cersei used to say that we were beautiful together. As it was bound to happen._

_If she looks like —_

_Like others see me? She does. But she never saw me the way you do._

_Well, you see me even uglier than anyone else, don’t you?_

_Fuck that nonsense. My wrists stopped bleeding, didn’t they? Or whatever it was that you did, I felt it._ She _didn’t even see it._ You _did. I think I learned my lesson._

_Jaime —_

_If you’re ugly to them,_ I _should be to you. And if they could see me as you do, maybe we’d be ugly together, but I think I’d like it better._

 _I’d like it better, too, but I don’t think there’s anything_ ugly _about you. You might have done ugly things… but it’s not who you are._

_Not many people would agree, and they don’t even see what you do._

_That’s a pity. Because I like what I see. I really do._

_Imagine that, I don’t hate it either._

 

 

Her lips feel softer than Cersei’s ever did as they meet his.

He raises his hand to cup the fading petals on her cheek. They feel healed.

Maybe he is, too.

 

 

End.


End file.
